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Secrecy

June 13, 2013

America’s PBS has long since compromised its journalistic integrity to deflect political and financial pressure from the Right. But assaults on public broadcasting in Greece and other countries are provoking outrage and resistance from the public, reports Danny Schechter.

June 12, 2013

Exclusive: Many Americans, particularly the young, are angry over government spying — and are cheering on leakers who release “secret” documents. By taking the “establishment” side of this debate, President Obama risks discrediting government just as it is needed on global warming and other critical issues, writes Robert Parry.

June 11, 2013

U.S. government officials (and many mainstream pundits) assure Americans that there’s nothing to fear from the electronic surveillance aimed at “terrorists,” but some intelligence experts say the new techniques could ultimately intimidate people from participating in democracy, as author Christopher Simpson tells Dennis J Bernstein.

June 11, 2013

It is true, as President Obama says, that you can’t have 100% security and 100% privacy, but it’s also true that you can never have 100% security – and seeking it often makes you less secure by creating more enemies. Any debate on this must include the imperfect process called “conflict transformation,” says Patrick T. Hiller.

June 10, 2013

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden explained his decision to leak top-secret documents as a response to America letting a ragtag group of terrorists scare the country into accepting a near-Orwellian surveillance state, a choice that can be challenged, says Norman Solomon.

June 10, 2013

After 9/11, the principal “liberty” that many Americans seemed to prize most was the “freedom” to go to the shopping mall without having to fear “terrorists.” That attitude gave impetus to the construction of a police-state framework that could crush all the other liberties and freedoms, Daniel Ellsberg warns.

June 10, 2013

Americans tend to swing back and forth on the question of security v. privacy, depending on the latest big story. After the Boston Marathon bombings, there was anger over too little FBI prevention; after disclosures of massive data collection, there’s fury over too much intrusion – a dilemma examined by ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

June 10, 2013

Exclusive: Edward Snowden, the person who disclosed top-secret documents on the U.S. government’s massive surveillance programs, is reportedly in Hong Kong and seeking asylum from countries that value openness and freedom, conditions seen as slipping away at home, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.

June 10, 2013

Exclusive: Americans are finally waking up to what George W. Bush created with his “war on terror” – and what Barack Obama has continued – a national security state that violates privacy and dispatches “special ops” teams or lethal drones to roam the world killing “terrorists,” a topic addressed by “Dirty Wars” and Lisa Pease.

June 8, 2013

Special Report: New evidence has shaken the confidence of former Rep. Lee Hamilton in his two-decade-old judgment clearing Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign of going behind President Carter’s back to frustrate his efforts to free 52 U.S. hostages in Iran, the so-called October Surprise case, Robert Parry reports.